February 27, 1999 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - Evangelical ecumenists such as Chuck Colson, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Charles Stanley, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson support a broad-based denominational coalition to "bring America back to God" and to win the "cultural war." Dr. Falwell endorsed Chuck Colson's 1992 book, The Body, which urges Evangelicals to join forces with Catholics and Charismatics and which looks upon the Catholic Church as a part of the "body of Christ."

We see just how cozy Jerry Falwell has become with Roman Catholicism in a scene described by Keith Fournier in his book Evangelical Catholics. Fournier, Dean of Evangelism at Roman Catholic Franciscan University of Steubenville, verifies the shifting position of Jerry Falwell concerning the Roman Catholic Church. Speaking about a meeting he attended of the "American Congress of Christian Citizens," Fournier states:

"In our meeting room were major Evangelical leaders I've admired for years--Dr. Charles Stanley, Dr. Jerry Falwell, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson, and many others. I found not only a tremendous openness to my presence, but also a growing respect for my church and a thawing in what had been hard ice in the past. Perhaps the comments by Dr. Falwell were most illustrative. He told the whole group not even to consider trying to affect public policy with only a narrow Evangelical Protestant church coalition. He said that from its inception any such effort must include Catholics and consultation with great churchmen such as Cardinal Law and Cardinal O'Connor. Clearly not backing off one bit from his self-described 'narrowness of doctrine,' Dr. Falwell showed a refreshing openness" (Fournier, Evangelical Catholics, p. 172).

Falwell, Kennedy, Colson, Stanley, Robertson and others who share their philosophy are the blind leading the blind. The root problem of societal ills is religious or spiritual. Apostate Israel of old was overrun with immorality, divorce, murder of babies, violence, and other social ills. God’s Word describes the source of the problem: "…for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land" (Jeremiah 23:15). The root of apostate Israel’s problems was her relationship with God, and at the heart of her alienation from God lay the apostasy of her spiritual leaders.

Likewise, the root problem of America's social ills is the apostasy and cowardice in the pulpits and the churches. Roman Catholicism, because of its apostasy from the Word of God and the New Testament faith, is at the root of American's problem (as is Modernism and every other anti-scriptural ism); it is foolish in the extreme to think that it could somehow be part of the solution. How can Roman Catholicism, which has never produced true biblical morality, be an accomplice in a coalition to bring back morality to America!? Wherever Roman Catholicism holds sway over men's lives (visit Italy or Mexico or Ireland, for example), you will find rampant immorality (adultery, fornication, pornography, child molestation) (even in its priests), divorce, annulments, gambling, lascivious dancing, immodest dress, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, idolatry, occultism, superstition, hypocrisy, agnosticism. It is with no sense of joy that I say these things, but this is a fact that I have observed with my own eyes. I realize that not every Catholic priest is a moral reprobate, but huge numbers of them are; and I realize that not every Catholic man or woman practices the things I have listed, but large numbers of them do. Roman Catholicism simply does not have the spiritual life and power to produce genuine biblical godliness. The Devil is the author of false religions like Roman Catholicism (2 Corinthians 11; 1 Timothy 4), and it is a strange sight to see men like Jerry Falwell clamor for unity with false religions for the purpose of defeating the Devil's works!